对话宏观分析师：AI吸干美股全部流动性，比特币4万才是底部

Compilation & Translation: Odaily TechFlow

Guest: Luke Groman, Founder of FFT LC, Institutional Macro Strategist

Podcast Source: Coin Stories

Original Title: The $40K Bitcoin Bottom Coming?

Air Date: June 5, 2026

Key Takeaways

U.S. long-term Treasury futures have lost 90% of their value against gold over the past 10 years, and GDP is still growing—meaning 90% might not be enough. This is the stark wake-up call from Luke Groman, founder of FFT LC and a macro strategist with 30 years of experience on Wall Street, for all investors.

In this conversation, he presents a cold yet coherent analytical framework: On the surface, the S&P 500 is hitting new highs, but in reality, it's driven by just seven AI stocks acting alone, while Bitcoin, the "last remaining smoke alarm for liquidity," is sending out warning signals.

If you want to know why Groman sold most of his Bitcoin near the top and hasn't bought back, why he believes stocks denominated in USD will continue to rise but will fall when measured in gold and Bitcoin, and why technical indicators suggest Bitcoin could retrace to the $40,000 range, this podcast is worth a listen.

Highlights of Key Insights

Why Hasn't Luke Groman Bought Bitcoin Again?

• "I bought a little bit, but basically the answer is no. I haven't really bought back in. I didn't sell all of it, but I sold most of it."
• "I'm watching. Bitcoin has been through a pretty tough stretch recently."

The Divergence Mystery: Stock Markets Hit New Highs, Bitcoin Liquidity Dries Up

• "Bitcoin is the smoke alarm for liquidity, probably the last one still working, and it's telling us something isn't right."
• "AI is sucking all the oxygen out of the room, sucking up all the liquidity. I think that's happening to Bitcoin too."

The Illusion of Value: How Accounting Tactics Inflate AI Valuations

• "The faster you build and the less cash flow you have, the faster your reported earnings go up—but you'll be desperately short of cash."
• "Once construction slows down, revenue growth starts to decelerate, the lagging effect of amortization catches up, and then the situation reverses."

Rising in USD, Falling in Gold and Bitcoin

• "My base case is: stocks go up a lot in USD terms, but go down a lot in gold and Bitcoin terms."
• "Over the past 10 years, U.S. long-term Treasury futures have fallen 90% against gold, and GDP is still growing—which shows 90% isn't enough."

China's Grip on Rare Earths

• "Trillions of dollars of U.S. stock market value—especially tech stocks, but not only them—is all built on rare earths, which is a tiny market from a commodity perspective."
• "China dominates this sector. They achieved this—first, by working at it for 30 years; second, by having more engineers than anyone else and fewer environmental regulations."
• "The U.S. government is now explicitly involved in this space. Historically, when governments get involved in companies, those companies are rarely good holdings."

The Strait of Hormuz: America's "Suez Moment"

• "My base case is, it's like a guy jumping from a 100-story building, passing the 40th floor and saying 'Hey, this feels like flying, fantastic.' What kills you isn't the fall, it's the sudden stop."
• "When you face this level of complacency, this level of inventory drawdown… why hasn't it reopened yet? That's what keeps surprising us 'tail-risk' people."

Why Is Iran Keeping the Strait of Hormuz Closed?

• "Using price to ration demand means a recession. That's what it means. And it will come with inflation at the same time—a stagflationary recession."
• "If I put myself in Iran's shoes—I've been bombed, I've held on this long, I've prepared 40 years for this day, dug all those tunnels, they destroyed far less than they think."

Surge in 'Non-Monetary' Gold Exports from the U.S. to China

• "In five of the past six months, non-monetary gold has been the single largest U.S. export item."
• "A lot of Trump supporters made statements saying 'Look how much Trump has shrunk the trade deficit!' The trade deficit is indeed shrinking, and the biggest marginal change is—gold exports."

Building a Proof-of-Work System for "Receipt-for-Settlement"

• "The world is moving towards a 'no ticky, no washy' system. What does that mean? It means—if the U.S. wants rare earths, bring gold, or the next shipment won't arrive; if China wants oil, bring gold, or the next shipment won't arrive."
• "Nobody trusts anybody anymore. In a world like that, what does the world move toward? You can't trust a ledger—you need a trustless way of clearing."

When Debt-to-GDP Hits 130%: What Happened in 58 Out of 58 Cases

• "In 150 years, 58 countries have reached 130% debt-to-GDP. So far, 58 out of 58 have defaulted—mainly through a significant period of inflation."
• "If AI doesn't destroy jobs, then it isn't the greatest thing since the internet, and it doesn't deserve these valuations. If it is the greatest thing and the valuations are justified, then white-collar jobs are about to be decimated—and U.S. employment provides half of tax revenue."

Do Technical Indicators Point to a $40,000 Bitcoin Bottom?

• "If you actually buy back in the $40,000 to $50,000 range, you become an epic legend—because you sold near the top."
• "They predict a bottom around Q3, Q4, roughly in the $40,000 range. I genuinely think we might actually see that level."

Why Hasn't Luke Groman Bought Bitcoin Again?

Host Natalie Brunell: Let's start with the Bitcoin question everyone is asking: Have you started buying back in, or are you waiting for Bitcoin to fall further? Because it hasn't been doing great lately.

Luke Groman:

It's been a tough few days. I bought a tiny bit tentatively, but basically the answer is: I haven't really re-entered. I didn't sell all my positions, but I sold most of them. Bitcoin's recent trajectory—especially over the last three to four days—has been quite a difficult period.

The Divergence Mystery: Stock Markets Hit New Highs, Bitcoin Liquidity Dries Up

Host Natalie Brunell: Can you break down why this is happening? We see the stock market so strong, constantly hitting new all-time highs. It reminds me of the stock market in 2021—new highs every other day. But back then, Bitcoin was also performing very well, and we were in a bull market. So what's with this divergence today?

Luke Groman:

I'm not sure, but my working hypothesis is: if you look at the underlying foundation of this market rally, it's not healthy. The indices are hitting new highs, new highs, new highs, but basically it's just seven stocks. I saw a chart yesterday: Excluding AI-related stocks, the S&P 500 is actually slightly lower than where it was before the Iran war started. I saw another chart: if you compare U.S. MSCI with non-U.S. MSCI emerging markets, then exclude TSMC, Samsung, and another big AI or memory company from the EM index—it looks like emerging markets are crushing the U.S., but remove those three or four AI names, and emerging markets are actually getting crushed. That's the breadth problem; we've seen a lot of discussion about market breadth, and I think the breadth under the current headline index levels is extremely poor. What's ultimately happening is that AI is sucking all the oxygen out of the room, sucking up all the liquidity, and concentrating it all in one sector. I think this is happening to Bitcoin too, and it's also a victim of this situation. I think Bitcoin is the smoke alarm for liquidity, probably the last one still working, and it's telling us something isn't right. At the same time, oil is also absorbing liquidity, or we should say the Trump administration, the U.S., is trying everything to keep oil prices down—mainly through jawboning and releasing Western strategic petroleum reserves. But oil prices have still gone up. Since the war started, even at current relatively low levels, they've risen about 50%. So I think oil is absorbing liquidity, commodities are absorbing liquidity, AI is absorbing liquidity. From a liquidity perspective, anything that isn't one of these three, or isn't directly related to them, isn't doing well, mostly flat or down.

The Illusion of Value: How Accounting Tactics Inflate AI Valuations

Host Natalie Brunell: Regarding AI companies, one interesting point is: some say it's a bubble, others say it's not. Their P/E ratios aren't that high, completely different from the dot-com bubble era, and they believe there's still a lot of room. But I remember you wrote about accounting issues—something about front-loading all the demand, all the investment happening now, but the actual revenue generation taking many years. Those data centers take years to build and generate real growth—but all the investment is being poured in right now.

Luke Groman:

The problem isn't that real growth isn't happening; it's more about the accounting treatment. Because the way accounting works is, you capitalize the construction costs upfront, book the revenue upfront, and amortize the expenses over a longer period. The impact of this accounting on reported earnings is: the faster you build and the less cash flow you have, the higher and faster your reported earnings go up. But you will be desperately short of cash, because you're spending money constantly, even if your book earnings are high.

You can expect to see earnings estimates being raised, and stock prices responding upward. You can also expect to see them move from financing with cash, to needing to borrow money, to needing to borrow more money—and we are indeed already seeing all of this happen. Where it gets really tricky is when this construction cycle slows down for any reason—whether it's because we can't get physical raw materials, or chip supply interruptions, or approval delays for data centers in various places—whatever the reason, once construction slows down, your revenue growth starts to decelerate, the lagging effect of amortization catches up, and then the situation reverses. Earnings will decelerate significantly or even start to decline, but most of that decline will be non-cash, and you will see cash flow actually start to rise.

So the question is: how will the market treat this situation? Will it think "earnings are decelerating but cash flow is now healthy"? On one hand, these stocks aren't particularly expensive on a valuation basis, which suggests it might not be a disaster. But on the other hand, they have huge momentum and are sucking up all the liquidity. So if earnings start to decelerate, why would I hold them instead of holding any other asset that previously had its liquidity sucked away? Will capital start to leave this sector and flow elsewhere? I guess the latter is more likely—at that point, they would lag for a while.

But this also involves a difficult question: when will that deceleration happen? What triggers it? There are many different factors that could cause it. And I think there's another complicating factor that didn't exist in 1999: in '99, we still had free markets. You could say the government wasn't very involved in the market; it was 'peak America.' Now the government is deeply involved. Back then we were a unipolar hegemon; now we're not—we're in a new great power competition. So, the internet bubble back then burst under its own weight. Today, I also think this rally will collapse or reverse at some point under its own weight, but it won't be allowed to burst on its own, because AI has been identified as a key battleground in the great power competition. That's the tricky part—the government is likely to step in to support it, to do whatever it deems necessary to keep this construction expansion going. And this also means it will continue to suck the oxygen away from all other assets, creating more problems. Many things remind me of 1999 to 2000, but there are also some things I think are quite different.

Rising in USD, Falling in Gold and Bitcoin

Host Natalie Brunell: Actually, a lot of people are saying the stock market will crash soon, that we're near the top, but it sounds like this rally might last a long time. I know you're cautious about the stock market overall, you've been very focused on gold and infrastructure. Do you think the prices of gold and Bitcoin will be suppressed? For Bitcoin players, I remember you said it might range between $58,000 and $72,000 for quite a while.

Luke Groman:

That was partly a half-joking comment, but I also see that when you look at what's happening right now, it seems the U.S. is trying to push decoupling from China. Therefore, certain things are needed politically: you need the yen to weaken, the won to weaken, to help shift production capacity out of China; you need the dollar to weaken to promote reshoring of manufacturing. All of these things should inherently be very favorable for gold and Bitcoin. However, there are forces within the U.S. that don't want to see this, because a rise in gold and Bitcoin sends a signal to the world that 'you're just printing money recklessly.' This would create problems in funding the Treasury bond market, especially given the movement in the 10-year yield since this war started.

I think the way they will do it is by expanding the derivatives market, similar to what was done historically with gold. Long term, I don't think they can do this to Bitcoin; but in the short term, as long as they can amplify derivatives, they can. A few months ago, someone mentioned that a large number of people were selling call options—essentially being passively short. You are meeting demand: someone wants Bitcoin exposure, but instead of buying Bitcoin itself, they buy call options on Bitcoin. Without these derivatives, the only way to have Bitcoin exposure was to buy Bitcoin.